My First Hitchhike Journey into the Universe with Astrophysics Student Pass [Part 1]
Hellow, no matter who and where you are, I wish you a good day!
Intro
Had been a years since I finished the long journey, and it would be nice to share things that I enjoyed during my first journey into the universe using the astrophysics undergrad student pass. Challenges, beautiful stuffs, nice people I met along the road, friendships I made, tears, cloudy and starry nights, side hustles I made with friends, the warmth I found in the darkness, lot of coffee, and many more.
The Ticket Check In
The first thing I have to explain is how I know whether the ticket is promising. Previously, I studied economics and was bored of it in the middle. Thinking of switching my major to STEM, maybe computer science.
I went to local planetary because they had biweekly classes. While attending the Physics Nobel Laureate talks with Brian Paul Schmidt about dark energy, we met Doctor Hakim L. Malasan, former head of Bosscha Observatory (and my thesis jury later). A brief talk with the group opened my mind.
Let me briefly introduce you to this mindblown. In the past, the Berkeley and Harvard group had a race to prove the decelerating universe because of gravitation, only to find out the contrary.
The first step into the real trip was a bit harder. I had to compete with thousands of high school students for a ticket in maths and natural science faculty at ITB. Accepted, and undergone a 1-year basic training of elementary courses, physics, mathematics, and chemistry. Not a very good mark, nonetheless I passed all of them. Subsequently, I chose astronomy. As simple as that except at the same time I competitively considered maths too, which ended with astronomy and actually resolved this settlement in the process.
I have a strong reason for this, would say, a life mission. Curiosity. Maybe it is feasible to write a whole diary and read a whole library about astrophysics, but I value the community. I want a discussion room too.
There was an on-boarding preliminary trip, where the pass holder gathered and brought to Bosscha Observatory. I befriend Ali, which later became my closest friend and mentor along the journey and in the literary club. He talked a lot to me about his prior international olympiad at India, in which he brought a silver medal. A prodigy by nature.
One of the best parts of this was the night observation. My first telescope was Vixen Sphinx, observing Sirius. We were divided into small groups and we need to report the observation. Ali’s group is beyond science, they found a globular cluster. A long night, and we slept inside the telescope house with sleeping bag. What a cold night, and some horror story is a nice idea. No coffee indeed. In the dawn, we had some conversation with tea and coffee and sang together.
That is the intro, I hope to write another part later since I had been sleepy enough. Have a nice day!
